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Spider-Man, 3/9/18

You know, it’s funny that Spider-Man’s whole shtick is that he was bitten by a radioactive spider and has the “proportional [X] of a spider” but his definitive, most famous power move — web-swinging from building to building — is … not something spiders do? I mean, I know sometimes they blow on the wind and stuff but the thing where he shoots a web at one building, uses it to pivot, then shoots another web at another building and repeats — is just not spider-y at all. It also only works in his native New York and other high-density cities, which is understandable but maybe he shouldn’t admit it quite so readily in front of a man who lives to antagonize him and buys ink by the barrel.

On an unrelated note, if the vision of Spider-Man swinging around an alligator (the proportional alligator swinging of a spider) and using it as a truncheon to beat aside other alligators and various snakes doesn’t fill you with pure joy, your mind works quite differently from mine.

Mark Trail, 3/9/18

You know, if I saw a big tiger in my front yard, my immediate reaction would be gibbering terror, not an earnest desire for civic engagement. I guess that’s the main difference between me and Mark, that and the fact that I don’t take unseemly pleasure in the screaming panic of children.

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Beetle Bailey, 3/8/18

I really appreciate General Halftrack’s heavy-lidded expression in panel two here. Without this cue, we’d interpret “Egad!” as being an indicator of genuine shock. But looking at him, we know it’s muttered under his breath with mingled contempt and disgust. He’s horrified by the deviants and weirdos who serve under his command, but he’s no longer surprised by them.

Blondie, 3/8/18

Today is International Women’s Day, and a bunch of comics did strips observing it in various ways! Blondie didn’t do an explicit shoutout, but we can see that the creators have really focused on important women’s issues, like the fact that they’re terrible drivers, amiright fellas?

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 3/8/18

“Of course, what with th’ terrible poverty an’ awful state of education in Hootin’ Holler, none of you girls are can grow up t’be lawyers or really much of ennythin’ else that call for book learnin’! That’s why yore feminist analysis has t’ take socioeconomic class into account!”

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Mary Worth, 3/7/18

Mary has tossed Ted Miller and his unpleasantness down the memory hole, and it seems that none of her supposed friends are going to really press too hard to get to the bottom of what happened. Certainly not Toby! Toby frankly doesn’t care about Ted Miller, who she can barely be bothered to remember as “Jeff’s friend.” Toby doesn’t care about anything that’s not a delicious muffin. “I guess it wasn’t meant to be,” she says dreamily, staring at the muffin in her hand with an expression of erotic languor that Ian has never seen over the entire duration of their marriage, not even once.

Shoe, 3/7/18

I’m pretty sure in Treetops the vultures are generally depicted as owning the town mortuary? This guy has a different name — “Dooley” instead of “Mort” — but it’s enough to establish that the corrupt Senator Belfrey is in the pocket of Big Death.

Dennis the Menace, 3/7/18

Usually Dennis’s parents are nothing but embarrassed when he perpetrates his menacing antics in front of other adults, but today they seems slyly pleased as he wreaks havoc all over the fancy tablecloth at this snooty restaurant. Maybe they’ve decided to weaponize their son’s bad behavior to strike a blow in the ever-running battle between snobs and slobs? “These assholes are gonna make people put on ties and they aren’t even really French?” the Mitchells think. “Fuck ’em.”